On January 30 – three days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries – an American scientist employed by NASA was detained at the US border until he relinquished his phone and PIN to border agents. Travellers are also reporting border agents reviewing their Facebook feeds, while the Department of Homeland Security considers requiring social media passwords as a condition of entry.

Intimidating travellers into revealing passwords is a much greater invasion of privacy than inspecting their belongings for contraband.

When Samsung Electronics remotely disabled the last of its flawed Galaxy Note 7 smartphones last month, it further blurred the lines between who ultimately controls your electronics: you, or the companies that make it work?

Industry executives and analysts say companies are exerting greater remote control over their devices - changing how and whether they work, removing or adding software and content, or collecting personal data from them - not always with permission or with the user's best interests at heart.

This is what male staff at an Apple store in Queensland have allegedly been caught doing red-handed. If the reports are true, they also stole explicit selfie photos from customers' phones and rated those too. Needless to say, the culprits have been promptly fired by Apple. Good. Riddance.